


A Feral, Vicious Thing

by captainpeggy



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: (but not a perfect replica), (it's shepard), Angst, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Enemies to Friends, Found Family, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Lesbian Character, Mass Effect 3: Citadel, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Renegade Shepard (Mass Effect), Renegon (Mass Effect), Sole Survivor (Mass Effect), but like. it's jack and shepard so comfort might be a strong word., oh you're goddamn right i wrote another character reflection. what of it!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-12
Updated: 2020-12-12
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:27:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28023951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainpeggy/pseuds/captainpeggy
Summary: “Fuck off, Jack,” Shepard said, and the sharpness of her words almost— almost— caught Jack off guard. “I’m not here to fix you. I don’t feel bad for you. I want to kill the Collectors, and you agreed to help me do it.”Jack's had enough of people trying to put her back together. Shepard has no intention of trying.A study of an unlikely alliance and an accidental friendship.
Relationships: Jack | Subject Zero & Female Shepard
Comments: 5
Kudos: 15





	A Feral, Vicious Thing

**Author's Note:**

> Was a little on the line about whether to rate this T or M. There's descriptions and discussions of graphic violence and some heavier stuff around discussions of torture and killing. Most of the stuff discussed does happen in canon, but I did go a bit deeper than 'low-res alien gets hit with laser, low-res alien is now lying on the ground.' It's by no means the whole fic, but please go in with your eyes open! :)

Jack learned pretty quickly to recognize the crew’s footsteps on the maintenance stairs. Tali’s quarian gait was unique and easy to pick out: Jack ignored her, and she seemed smart enough to return the favour, doing whatever rewiring she had to do and going right back upstairs with no fanfare or discussion. The engineers both walked the same way— quick steps, but measured ones, distinguishable based mostly on their volume. They didn’t come down to Jack’s little nest much. They were scared of her. She had no problem with that.

Chambers, that prissy little commander’s assistant, just about _bounced_ , which irritated Jack. She wasn’t sure how much of the annoyance came from the yeoman’s gait and how much of it came from the yeoman herself. Chambers was clearly smart, and she knew it. She seemed determined to get to know Jack, but the Cerberus logo on her uniform made that unlikely. Jack led her down a merry road of psychological intrigue for a while, but it got boring eventually, and she started pretending to be asleep whenever she heard Chambers coming down the steps.

Shepard marched. Steady one-two footsteps on the stairs in a rhythm that would have done any admiral proud. It was like she was on goddamn parade. Jack half-expected to see her round the corner in Alliance dress blues with medals pinned to her chest. The commander’s small frame and ratty N7 hoodie felt wrong for that sort of walk. It was a marine’s march, not a renegade Spectre’s.

But then again, Jack wasn’t in much place to judge.

She’d only been on the _Normandy_ a few days when Shepard strode down the stairs holding a steaming steel canister and a glass of something beige. The commander strode down the steps with the same steady time as always, the familiar clang-clang-clang of boots on metal snapping Jack out of a blank reverie.

“Dinner,” said Shepard. She plunked the containers down on an old cabinet and brushed off her hands.

“I don’t want your pity,” Jack snapped.

“It’s not pity,” said Shepard flatly. “It’s dinner. Eat it or don’t.”

“You’re not gonna win me over with food.”

“Fuck off, Jack,” Shepard said, and the sharpness of her words almost— _almost_ — caught Jack off guard. “I’m not here to fix you. I don’t feel bad for you. I want to kill the Collectors, and you agreed to help me do it.”

Jack narrowed her eyes. “If you don’t feel bad for me, what the fuck is this?”

“It’s reconstituted beef stew,” Shepard said crisply. “Tastes like shit. Be ready to go tomorrow at 0600. We’re going to Tuchanka.”

Jack opened her mouth to say something, but Shepard was already halfway back up the stairs, and the words died on her lips.

//

Tuchanka was… fine. Jack would have been lying if she said she wasn’t a _little_ impressed seeing Shepard get all buddy-buddy with a thousand-year-old krogan patriarch, but the commander didn’t need to know that. What had been more interesting, though, was the thresher maw.

It wasn’t the animal itself. Sure, the thing was huge and scary and wanted nothing more than to gobble Jack down like an amuse-bouche, but eventually enemies all start to look the same. It could kill her just the same as any of the Cerberus goons could have, or the rogue geth, or those fucked-up insects Shepard had them chasing. No, what was interesting about the thresher maw was how Shepard had reacted to it. Jack had thought the shaking ground was an earthquake at first, and had looked to Shepard for orders. But the commander had frozen, eyes unfocused and face bloodless, like she’d just seen a ghost. Shepard had known what was coming from the very first shadow of a rumble, and the numb terror on her face had made Jack’s blood run cold.

They’d killed it, of course. Jack had thrown Shepard out of the way of an acid projectile, and the impact had jarred the commander back to reality: she’d stumbled back to her feet and swung an assault rifle off her back, and the three of them had taken the goddamn thing apart like the forces of nature they were. When it fell to the ground, Shepard had collapsed to her knees in front of it and held her head in her hands, and Jack had pretended she couldn’t see her shoulders shaking.

She’d assumed it would be a while before the commander bothered her again, but they’d barely been back on the ship an hour when she heard footsteps on the stairs.

“Here,” said Shepard, and tossed a small carton onto Jack’s cot. “It’s fucking cold down here.”

Jack looked at the label. It was a foil emergency blanket, the sort they kept in first aid kits to reflect body heat. Hardly a feather duvet. She’d have told Shepard to fuck off if it had been.

Instead, she picked up the carton and tucked it under the emergency PFD she’d been using as a pillow.

“You want something to eat?” Shepard asked.

Jack glared at her.

“There’s shit in the kitchen,” Shepard said. “Just wanted to tell you we got a new shipment of dextro stuff for Tali and Garrus, so check the labels.”

And then she left.

//

A few days later, Shepard’s footsteps jolted Jack out of a nap. She sat up, startled, and shoved the foil blanket back under the PFD, stifling a yawn as Shepard rounded the corner and strode crisply down the rest of the stairs.

“You need a shower,” Shepard said.

“Like hell I do,” said Jack. “You don’t need me to smell like roses. You need me to kill Collectors for you.”

“Yeah, well, Mordin says he’s not getting in a shuttle with you again till you wash. Something about axillary glands and accelerated superbug evolution. He says you’re a biohazard.”

Jack raised an eyebrow.

Shepard shrugged. “You fucking reek. Anyways, Thane and I’ve got business on the Citadel. EDI’s locking off the auxiliary bathroom near the shuttle bay for the next three hours, so it’s all yours. I think there’s some new species of fungus growing in the grates down there. Lap of fucking luxury. Don’t use all the hot water.”

“There’s hot water?” Jack asked in a convincingly bored tone. “I thought this was a military ship.”

“I’ll make EDI turn it off, if you want to self-flagellate some more,” snapped Shepard. “It’s that or I dump a bucket of bleach on you. Take your pick.”

“Fuck off,” said Jack.

Shepard obliged.

The spare bathroom turned out to be cramped and cold, without the heated tiles of the crew deck or the warmth of the nearby drive core to raise the temperature a few degrees. It was also abandoned. A old-school deadbolt was welded onto the door. The seams looked fresh, like the mechanical lock was a recent patch job rather than part of the original design.

“EDI?” Jack said aloud almost curiously, and immediately regretted it. Her voice sounded very small in the tiny space.

There was no reply from the AI. Jack looked around the room. Two of the corners were dusted with black paint, the sort that came out of a rattle can, and a chunk of the wall panelling looked to have been recently pried off and replaced. She squinted up at one of the corners, and saw the tell-tale shape of a sensor apparatus rendered useless by the coating of paint. Huh. That was a street trick. Not what she’d have expected from the Normandy.

Jack bolted the door and switched on the water.

//

Shepard came by late that night, when Jack had towelled off and was buzzing her hair down with an old razor. She had to admit, it felt good to have a shower. Almost made her feel human again. She didn’t have to admit it out loud, though.

“You want a hand with that?” Shepard asked.

Jack’s hands stilled at the nape of her neck, then kept moving, shearing off the past week’s worth of stubble. “I’m good. How’s Thane?”

“He’s Thane,” said Shepard. “He’ll be all right. Family shit.”

“Wouldn’t know much about families,” Jack muttered.

“Me neither,” said Shepard. “But I hear they’re more trouble than they’re worth.”

Jack tipped her head to one side and carefully worked her way around her ear with the razor. “I always figured you were a Navy brat. Big fucking family who cheered when you enlisted.”

“No,” said Shepard simply. “I never knew my parents.”

“You from Earth?”

Shepard nodded. “New York City. I hated the place. Four hundred years of industrial hell grinds despair into the concrete. You ever been?”

“To Earth?” asked Jack. “Or to NYC? It’s a no either way. There’s nothing in it for me.”

“Smart girl,” said Shepard.

“How’d you make it this far as an orphan?” Jack wondered.

Shepard sighed. “I was a street kid. I fell in with some local gangs at a pretty young age and ended up throwing my lot in with a group that called themselves the Tenth Street Reds. We actually operated out of an apartment complex on Thirty-First Street. Go figure. But I hung around with them for about a decade and I enlisted the day I turned eighteen. Got the hell off that rock and didn’t go back till the Alliance forced me to.”

Jack brushed the last of the clippings off her shoulders, letting them fall to the steel compartment floor. “Wouldn’t have pegged you for a street rat.”

Shepard just shrugged and looked at her feet.

There was a long pause.

“You just gonna stare at the ground all night, or can you fuck off and let me sleep?” Jack asked.

“Yeah,” said Shepard. Suddenly any hint of melancholy was gone, and she was back to the brisk, impersonal commander. “Just thought you’d want to know that once we wrap up a couple of things on the Citadel, Joker’s got a relay jump plotted that’ll take us by those coordinates you gave me. We can hit it next week.”

Jack froze.

“There’s a crate of demolitions-grade RDX plastique in the hold,” Shepard continued. “I had Donnelly rig up a detonator. Current plan is to land Tuesday at 0700 and be back through the relay by noon, so clear your schedule.”

And she turned and walked away.

//

They blew the base off the face of that goddamn planet. Just like Jack had wanted. And _fuck,_ it had felt good. Hitting that detonator, wiping that fucking shithole out, that had felt damn good. She’d wanted nothing to be left standing. She’d wanted to do exactly what those scientists had wanted her to— to march in there like the weapon of mass destruction she’d been made to be and tear the place apart.

And Shepard had helped her do it.

But still— sitting in that shuttle, flipping the cap on and off the detonator, _click-click-clicking_ , something had stuck in her throat. The confidence she’d expected was curiously absent. She’d closed her eyes and pictured white lab coats and sterile tables, but the image warped into a man on his knees begging for his life, and the sound twisted into Shepard ordering her to quit stalling and pull the trigger.

 _Bitch,_ Jack had thought, and then she’d hit the button.

And it had felt good. It really, truly had. But that fucker’s face was seemingly etched into her memory, one last scar that fucking lab had left her with. And that… that was hard to swallow.

Shortly after they’d gotten back to the Normandy, Shepard marched down the stairs— crisp as usual— to check in. Jack swore at her and thanked her and told her to fuck off, and it seemed for a while that she might have listened. But two hours later she came back downstairs with a bottle of whiskey and a couple of sodas, and poured them both drinks without saying anything. Jack wasn’t about to be the one to break the silence.

Shepard downed her first glass without stopping to breathe, and poured herself another, heavy on the booze. Jack looked at the orange fissures spiderwebbing across her face, and wondered if they hurt.

The commander caught her staring. “Not pretty, are they?”

“You’d think there’d be some shit Chakwas could do about that.”

“There is,” said Shepard shortly. “But it takes money and time, and the war effort is more important than my vanity.”

“You got any other scars?”

One of Shepard’s hands went down to her stomach, brushing against her jacket almost unconsciously. She shook her head. “Not anymore. Miranda took care of that.”

A long pause.

“I don’t know if I should have killed that guy, Shepard,” Jack said quietly.

“Good,” said Shepard.

“The fuck do you mean, _good?_ _”_

“How many people have you killed in your life?”

Jack tried to run the numbers, but gave up after age eleven. “Dozens, for sure. Hundreds, probably.”

“How many of them were innocents?”

Jack shook her head. “Nobody’s fucking innocent.”

“Answer the question.”

“Half? A third?”

“Right,” said Shepard. “And how many of _those_ did you feel guilty about?”

Jack didn’t answer.

“That fucker deserved to die, Jack. Trust me. But it doesn’t make you weak to second-guess pulling the trigger.”

“The fuck does it make me, then?”

Shepard took a drink. “I can tell you, but you won’t like the answer.”

“Spit it out.”

“It makes you human,” Shepard said. “It makes you the only sort of person who should be allowed behind a gun.”

Jack glared at her. “Oh, look at you. Miss High-and-fucking-Mighty.”

“You ever hear of the X57 incident?”

“No,” said Jack. “We didn’t get a lot of current events coverage in maximum security.”

“Bunch of batarian terrorists hijacked an asteroid and were planning to crash it into a colony of four million humans. Me and Kaidan and Ash got an order from Alliance brass to get out there and stop it. It was a tall order, but we rerouted the torches they were using to control its trajectory and stopped the collision.”

“Sounds great,” said Jack in a bored tone.

“We finally caught up with the lead batarian on the asteroid’s central research base. He’d locked every surviving scientist on the base in a holding cell and wired it with explosives. He said I’d let him go, or he’d kill them.”

Jack looked at Shepard, who was staring into her glass like there might be an answer at the bottom of the liquor. “What did you do?”

“I shot him,” said Shepard. “In the leg. He hit the detonator, the room exploded, and the hostages were ripped to shreds. I didn’t care. I walked over to him and I shot him in the kneecap. When he wouldn’t talk, I shot him in the other one. He sang like a goddamn canary. I shot him again in the shoulder, fractured his clavicle. He screamed. He begged.”

She took a breath. “So I shot him again. Just about blew his arm off, but I left enough hanging on to keep it fucking excruciating.”

“And then?” asked Jack.

“I gave it a couple of minutes. Then I shot him in the chest,” said Shepard. “Not in the heart. Lower left thoracic quadrant, right through his lung. Those injuries don’t kill as fast. They leave you choking on blood and gasping for air, in agony while air leaks into your chest cavity.”

“And _then_?”

“And then I left,” said Shepard.

“What the fuck did you do that for?”

“Guess I liked the idea of the fucker dying in agony,” Shepard replied bitterly. “I don’t know. I went to the holding cell. There were three corpses, if you could still call them that. Three charred piles of flesh. The room smelled like goddamn burnt chicken. I stood there for a minute, and then I radioed Joker and told him to come get us.”

“Must have felt pretty shitty to confess _that_ guilt to your preacher.”

There was a long, long pause before Shepard finally spoke.

“I didn’t feel guilty,” she said simply. “Not at all. I didn’t care. I stood there and I smelled the scorched meat that had been innocent people just a couple of minutes ago, people that I’d turned into _meat_ for no reason— because I felt like making that man suffer more than I felt like saving their lives. And I didn’t care. I just stood there, waiting to feel guilty, and it never came. And that— _that_ was worse.”

She downed the rest of her drink.

Jack didn’t say anything.

“Lean into it, kid,” said Shepard. “The uncertainty. The doubts. Regrets just mean you gave a shit. That’s the price.”

//

Then came the Collector base. Then came the Seeker swarms. Then came Shepard’s team standing in a circle so far up the enemy’s ass that they were practically swimming in stomach acid, and Jack standing there alongside them all, waiting for her to pick a strike team.

“Theoretically, any biotic could do it,” said Miranda. Her eyes flicked over to Samara as she spoke. Jack would’ve seconded the opinion if she’d been asked— the asari was badass enough and a rock-solid teammate. All dedication and focus and control, and that shit. If anyone had a chance at marching them through a cloud of Seeker swarms alive, it’d be the justicar.

Shepard glanced around the group as well, gaze settling on Samara after a long moment. The asari looked back at her levelly, cool, unblinking eyes betraying none of the thoughts behind them.

“Samara,” said Shepard, and an almost imperceptible ripple went through the group. A nod from Miranda. A shiver of relief from Jacob. A slow incline of the head from Thane. Jack looked over at Samara, and saw her posture straighten just the slightest bit more: shoulders back, chin up, a proper approximation of parade rest. It was a good call. The commander did make those once in a while.

“You’ll lead the diversion team,” Shepard said, and any tension that had diffused when she’d said the justicar’s name coalesced again tenfold. “Take Zaeed, Grunt, Jacob, and Miranda. Thane, Garrus, you’re with me.”

Seven pairs of eyes flicked over to the one person in the group that Shepard hadn’t named.

“Jack,” said Shepard. “I want you on the barrier.”

“Commander, I’m not sure that’s wise,” interrupted Miranda.

“Last I checked, Lawson, I was still in charge here,” Shepard snapped. “I’ll see you five on the other side. Move out.”

Miranda looked from Shepard to Samara with an odd expression on her face: regret, maybe. Some kind of sorrow.

“Move _out_ ,” repeated Shepard, and Samara marched off with an aura that didn’t leave her team much choice but to follow.

Jack watched them walk away, and opened her mouth before she thought better of it. “Stupid call, Commander.”

Shepard wheeled on her and grabbed her shoulder, gauntleted fingers digging into Jack’s skin. She got in close, close enough that Jack could read the text on her visor, could smell the industrial-issue soap that they kept in stock on the Normandy. She shoved Jack roughly up against the wall, boxing her in and pinning her there with rough stone scraping against her bare shoulders. It stung like hell, but the pain was familiar. Grounding.

Something about seeing the commander snap felt… not _good._ But _right._ Fair. Fitting. Frightening, too, for as long as she was rattling out F-words—

“I don’t _make_ stupid calls,” Shepard growled. Jack could feel spittle landing on her face as Shepard spoke. “Get your head out of your ass, Jack. You’re not Subject Zero anymore, not today. You’re a damn good soldier and you’re sharper than a goddamn particle beam, and you’re the greatest fucking biotic this galaxy has ever seen.”

“Shepard,” said Garrus quietly— not quite a caution.

“Fuck off, Garrus.” The commander’s breath was hot and her scars sparked orange with her rising temper, like she was some kind of devil trying to burn her way out of a mortal shell. “I’m not here for this bullshit today, Jack. You want to hate yourself? You want to hate the universe? Fine. God knows I fucking do. But I’m done letting you leave the bar on the floor,” Shepard growled. “You just followed me on a one-way trip to Hell and I swear to any god that’s listening I’m going to drag every one of us the _fuck_ back out of here before the day is through, and _you_ _’re going to help me do it._ ”

Jack was, for the first time in living memory, stunned into silence.

“ _You_ ,” snarled the commander, jabbing a finger into Jack’s sternum, hard enough to bruise, “are your own fucking woman, and you might not believe it, but you’re exactly as good as you say you are and I know it. So we’re going through that door, and you’re going to throw up a fucking barrier, and we are going to march through that swarm like it’s a Sunday morning walk to church. Are we clear?”

Jack opened and closed her mouth several times like a fish out of water.

“I _said,_ soldier,” Shepard roared, scars burning brighter, “ARE WE CLEAR?”

Biotic energy radiated out from Jack’s implant, shrouding her body in rippling waves of blue. In an instant, she pulled the energy into herself and blasted it out in a shockwave that flung Shepard off her and sent the commander staggering backwards. Shepard regained her footing quickly, but didn’t make a move to take another swing at Jack. She just stood there, breathing heavily, glaring at Jack with those shining orange eyes. Behind the sickly glow of the implants, behind the red-hot rage, an emotion too raw to name smoldered.

Dead silence hung in the air for a long moment, their gazes locked. Brown glowing blue with dark energy. Green burning sunset-red with undead fire.

And then, slowly, Jack’s lips curled into a grin, and it was a feral, vicious thing.

“Yes, _sir._ ”

“Let’s quit fucking around, then,” said Shepard, and if Jack hadn’t known the woman, she might almost have thought there was pride in those cybernetic eyes before she turned away.

//

Shepard was true to her word. They'd followed her on a one-way trip to Hell, and she'd burned it down and marched them the fuck back out again.

Most of them, at least.

If Jack had to point a finger at the guy she thought would die on the Collector base, it would have been Mordin. Salarians weren't renowned for their resilience, and it wasn't like the guy had a lot of years left on him in the first place. After that-- Thane, maybe, because he seemed like the sort of guy to sacrifice himself in the name of the mission. Even Tali, because brains weren't worth much in a fight, and you can't hack your way out of a slug to the chest.

But Zaeed?

Fuck.

Jack had heard a story about some dude back on Earth, a guy who got shot execution-style— ten guns and and a bullet to the head for good measure-- and lived to tell the tale. She'd wondered, almost idly, what it was that finally got him. Tuberculosis? Heart disease? Any death must have felt like a let-down after that. Like living through a fistfight with God and then dying of tetanus.

Zaeed would have been ticked off at the crew for thinking about him. Jack could picture him bitching from the afterlife. _The fuck are you doing, wasting time on a coffin? Chuck me out the airlock, you stupid sentimental bastards._ But funerals were for the living, not the dead. So they'd stood around the steel casket and none of them had had anything to say, and they'd all pretended they were paying respects instead of measuring it against their own heights.

That night, Shepard called them to the mess hall for some sort of announcement. They'd clustered around the table while she stood at the head, glancing from crewman to crewman before she finally spoke.

“The Alliance is impounding the _Normandy_ ,” Shepard said.

The room erupted in chatter. Jack saw the surviving engineer turn to Tali and start talking urgently. Joker looked up in shock, struck dumb for the first time in his life. Garrus mumbled something about a to-do list. Chakwas raised her hand and started trying to talk over everyone, but that stiff British accent was only going to get her so far. Miranda didn’t look surprised, and leaned over to whisper something to Jacob. It figured that _she_ _’d_ be the first one the commander had told. Mordin was saying something about genetic sequencing data, Thane and Samara were speaking quietly in the corner, Grunt was yelling, Legion was buzzing anxiously, and Kasumi was— well, somewhere. Jack instinctively put her hands over her pockets.

“Okay, okay, settle down!” Shepard shouted. The room began to quiet. “Settle down.”

Jack put up a hand. Shepard pointed at her.

“Look,” Jack said, “do you _want_ the _Normandy_ impounded?”

Shepard squinted at her.

“I mean, do you want them to take her? Because, like, I can just… keep that from happening. If you don’t want the ship impounded, we don’t have to get the ship impounded. I can just… yeah.” She waved a hand. “Pretty easy.”

“Sweet of you to offer,” said Garrus.

“Hey, fuck off,” Jack snapped. “Fine, get your precious calibrations fucked up by a bunch of bureaucrats. See if I care.”

“Actually, I was being genuine,” Garrus said.

“So was I. I’ll rip out the main battery console with my bare hands, bird boy.”

Shepard watched the exchange with vague amusement before she finally spoke up. “Much as I appreciate that suggestion, Jack, I think turning us in is the right thing to do. We’ll make a relay jump past the Citadel, so anyone who wants off can get off before we head for Earth.”

Jack shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

“Jack,” said Shepard, and caught her eye with a steady gaze: “Thank you.”

There was something unsaid in the _thank you._ Usually that wasn’t how it worked. People would say more when they meant less, think _thank you_ or _I love you_ and say _sorry for being such a disaster last night_ or _let me know if there_ _’s anything I can do._ But this _thank you_ meant something else, something bigger. Warm and almost comforting. Something that felt like home.

“Uh, sure. Don’t get all weepy on me now,” Jack said, and she meant _you_ _’re welcome_ and _thank you_ too, all rolled up into one.

//

It was 2186 before they talked again.

The two of them stood by the bar in Anderson’s— Shepard’s?— apartment, a couple of drinks in and a little common sense down. Liara’s weird little info-drone was blasting music over in the living room, and every now and then the occasional muffled wisecrack filtered in from the kitchen. There hadn’t been any gunshots yet, which Jack wasn’t sure whether to count as a win or a loss. If Wrex and that buggy-eyed Prothean didn’t find something to occupy themselves soon, though, that might change.

“The fuck are you teaching your kids to call me?” asked Shepard. “I ran into a couple on the Strip the other day. Cute of you to give them some time off, by the way… All of them hesitate for a second before they say _Commander,_ or _Shepard._ Like they’re not used to the name. You got them calling me some stupid nickname behind my back?”

“I don’t care enough about you to give you a nickname,” said Jack flatly.

“Oh, bullshit. What do they call me?”

Jack rolled her eyes. “That’s not important.”

“So they _do_ call me something.” said Shepard with a grin.

“They call you _asshole._ ”

“No they don’t.”

Jack sighed. “They, uh. I want it on record that I didn’t come up with this.”

“Spit it out!”

“They call you Aunt Shep.”

A strange and unfamiliar expression crossed Shepard’s face. “Aunt Shep?”

“You know, ‘cause— they think you’re like their fucking big sister, or some shit.”

Shepard looked down at her drink. “Big sister, huh?”

“Like you’re _my_ fucking big sister. Fine. Is that what you wanted?”

There was that expression again, that weird contradictory mess of joy and despair, of terror and of peace. In-fucking-scrutable.

Shepard was silent for a long moment.

“Shouldn’t have said anything in the first place,” mumbled Jack self-consciously. “It’s stupid.”

“No, Jack, I—” Shepard broke off. “Fuck.” She threw back the rest of her drink. “I’d be a shit big sister. Ashley, she’s a good sister. I’m just me.”

“Fuck Ashley,” said Jack. “Goody-two-shoes God-fearing Alliance marine to the bitter end. Nice tits, though.” Then: “You ever hit that? Always seemed like you two had a bit of a— well, you know.”

“You’re changing the subject,” Shepard said.

“Oh, so you wanna talk about feelings now, do you, Shepard?”

She laughed, a short, sharp laugh, like she was trying to grab the sound out of the air before the universe realized what was happening and pulled it back. “Me and Ash… no, never. Not for lack of trying on my part. But I wasn’t her type, and like you said, goody-two-shoes marine to the end. She wasn’t the type to sleep with her CO. Probably a good thing. I don’t know if I was ever really interested in her, or if I just latched on because we’d stumbled through the same hell and both come out shattered. Losing your squad, it does things to you. You lose a man, even two, that’s a tragedy, but they knew what they signed up for. But when you’re hunkered down in a chunk of wreckage with no ammo and your armour half-shredded and your buddies’ corpses going stiff on all sides, and the only life signs on your visor are yours and the _thing_ on the other side of your flimsy little shelter…” Her voice cracked. “I can’t really explain it. But even after the rescue team hauls you out, even after your gear’s repaired and your bones are mended and your scars are as faint as they’re ever gonna be— even then, you never really leave. Part of me’s still curled up behind that debris on Akuze. Part of Ash got left in the dirt on Eden Prime.”

“I get that,” Jack said.

“Yeah,” said Shepard. “You do.”

Jack grabbed the bottle off the bar and refilled Shepard’s glass. From up on the balcony, there was a crashing sound and a wave of Spanish profanities.

“You know, you told me once that you didn’t care,” Jack said quietly. “You told me that you couldn’t feel guilty anymore.”

Shepard took a slow breath and let it out. “I remember.”

“You told me that _guilt means you give a shit,_ and that not feeling it made you less than human.”

“I remember that too.”

Jack swirled the liquid around in the bottle of her glass. “Can I ask you a question?”

Shepard sighed. “Will it stop you if I say no?”

Jack let the silence sit for a minute before she spoke.

“The commando you met on Thessia. The one whose squad died giving you cover to get to the temple. What was her name?”

“Lieutenant Kurin,” said Shepard without a moment’s hesitation.

“How many names are on the Normandy’s memorial wall?”

“Thirty-three.”

“What were Zaeed Massani’s last words?”

Shepard let out a little huff that might almost— _almost—_ have been a laugh. “GSW to the gut, and the guy was bleeding out in my arms, and he looks me dead in the eye and quips ‘had a funny feeling it would end like this.’”

“How many daughters does Samara have?”

“Three,” said Shepard. “But… just one left, now.”

“How many bones did Joker break while giving us suppressing fire on the suicide mission?”

Shepard closed her eyes. “Seven. Clavicle, two ribs, radius, ulna, hairline fracture to the humerus, and scapula when the recoil threw him back against the airlock wall.”

“What do you see when you close your eyes at night?” Jack asked quietly.

“A child on fire,” said Shepard, eyes still shut, voice ragged and raw.

Jack reached out, very slowly, very carefully, to trace one of the glowing scars across Shepard’s cheekbone. Shepard flinched, but didn’t pull away.

Jack cleared her throat awkwardly and went back to her drink. “You said you weren’t human. Well, guess fuckin’ what, Shepard? Some asshole taught me once that if you lose your humanity, you can damn well find it again.”

The corner of Shepard’s lips quirked in something resembling a smile. “Motherhood really did bring out the poet in you, huh, psychotic biotic?”

Jack laughed. “Fuck off, Shep.”

“If I’m Aunt Shep, do they have an Auntie Liara? What do they call Garrus? An aunt’s brother would be an uncle, right? Uncle Vakarian? What’s an aunt’s uncle— is that some sort of cousin? Great-Uncle Wrex! I can see it. The Reapers have nothing on our Thanksgiving dinner.”

“The Reapers have nothing on _you,_ ” said Jack seriously. “You thought you had to be a machine to take them down. That’s bullshit. Fuck your Crucible. The best weapon you’ve got against these fuckers is the fact that you have people you’re fighting to save.”

Shepard half-smiled. “Thanks, Jack.”

“Yeah, fuck you, you’re welcome,” Jack said, and took a drink.

**Author's Note:**

> WHEW this fic was heavy to write, even over several months. Anyways *points to parallels* I just think they're neat :)
> 
> Today's thing rec is _Behind the Bastards,_ an excellent podcast about terrible people, where the host is really just doing his best. They did a review of Ben Shapiro's book, and it's somehow even worse than you're imagining! (Don't worry, they returned their copy for a refund.)
> 
> As always, thank you so much for reading! Please comment/kudos/share if you can, I put nice comments in a bowl and eat them for power. They nourish me.
> 
> Don't forget to wash your hands, wear your mask _(over your nose),_ and choose kindness.


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